Back in November 2023, I wrote a day one review of the new Pathfinder 2^nd Edition Player and GM Core books. Then I followed it up a few weeks later with an in depth look at the GM Core book. Paizo was killing it, and now I’ve looked through the new Monster Core book. Let’s dive in!

Notice: an electronic copy of the Monster Core book was provided to me complimentarily for review and content purposes by Paizo Inc., in compliance with US law.

Background

No change here! After the OGL 1.1 nonsense in early 2023, Paizo made the call to scrub Pathfinder of everything that could connect it legally to D&D. This was a massive effort and risk on their part, especially since they were still in the establishment phase of Pathfinder’s second edition. The gamble paid off though, because the new Core books were a triumph. Their design and layout were superb, the usability was solid, and they provided the polish that the second edition needed to really distinguish itself from D&D and the first edition of Pathfinder.

The Monster Core book is the third of four core books for the game, with the final core book, Player Core 2, being scheduled for late summer 2024. Clocking in at 376 pages long, the Monster Core offers up over 400(!) monsters, opponents, and threats.

The Good

Foremost is the hard separation from D&D’s monsters while retaining as much as possible to keep Pathfinder and Golarion’s lore coherent. The team at Paizo achieved these goals using two methods. One was simple name changes with sufficient ability modifications to be able to say “This is not the monster you think it is.” Which makes sense. A solid example of this practice comes to us with the Aboleth to Alghollthu shift. The Aboleth were a key part of the lore for Golarion and particularly the Azlanti. But they were very D&D, so enter the Alghollthus. The name isn’t new, but the format and appearance are. They’re distinct, don’t break the lore, and are a smooth replacement.

On the “hard shift” side, we see the Dragon list. D&D is famous for its metallic/chromatic dragons. They’re entwined through just about everything and even make up a not insignificant part of the Ur-lore for the larger multiverse/cosmology of the game. They had to go. In their place are three groupings of dragons, Arcane, Divine, and Occult. Then there’s the specific dragon types; Adamantine, Conspirator, Diabolic, Empyreal, Fortune, Horned, Mirage, and Omen dragons. Then there’s Drakes and Linnworms, meaning there’s never a lack of draconic opponents. What I like here is that it’s all adding to the setting and vibe in ways that the old system didn’t.

Garund Lore! The lore of Garund seems to be relegated to development in descriptions of things and in text boxes, but that’s okay! The new nuggets that the Monster Core book brings us is that the name Catfolk use for themselves is Amurrun, and they have a nation called Murraseth in the south of Garund, where the Droon Empire of the Iruxi (Lizardfolk) is. There’s also more info on the lost Jistka Imperium, who created the Automatons and a variety of other constructs; namely that their quest for increasingly powerful power sources led some to turn to the outer planes and fiends (the spiciest of batteries), ultimately setting their own doom in motion. So, between this and content in the Guns & Gears, The Mwangi Expanse, Book of the Dead, and The Impossible Kingdoms, Garund is getting wilder and more interesting with each passing publication if you take a moment to stitch it all together.

The last big point for The Good section is the art. Are there different artists at work? Yes. Is the art direction tight, keeping the vibe and theme consistent throughout the whole book? Also, yes. Art does a lot to set tone and vibe, and maintaining a consistent message is part of what develops immersion and what informs players and GMs alike about the broad feel of a game. So it’s awesome to see it happening.

In rapid fire form, so other stuff I thought was Good:

Kholo are in, Gnolls are out! The Kholo are now the official Hyenafolk of Golarion and Pathfinder, and are net better than their D&D origin.
Megadungeon Fun! The dinosaur section has some great sidebar info on Hollow Worlds and adding dinosaur areas to the Darklands. Underground Golarion is getting more awesome!
Demons, Devils, and Extraterrestrials are all well represented and give the place a nice vibe in keeping with the science-fantasy genre vibe the larger setting has.
Genies and Giants have seen some remodeling and while I’m not 100% on the cultural side of things, the name changes are welcome.
Oni have been separated from western Ogres, there’s no forced equivalency anymore.
Aeons, Proteans, and Psychopomps are fire.
The way the entries are resented makes it easy to slot them into biomes and then from there into ruins, dungeons, or wilderness encounters.

The Bad

With all that Good, unfortunately there’s some Bad too.

Leading the way here is D&D, Gygax style, non-functional monster cultures/societies. Ogres, Bugbears, Trolls and some others are all victims of this. It’s poor world building. Ogres are flesh eating voracious humanoids? Cool! But the way their culture and society is described makes them out as non-functional. Like, they would be unable to reproduce and sustain their existence; they’d be a distant memory within a few human generation. Bugbears make no sense with their entry; they like creeping on people because… creeping? They’re like the Underwear Gnomes in that old South Park episode, except their three part plan is Creep on People, ????, Profit. And Trolls? Lone monsters have to have a unique origin/source, ascribing the practices of a lone predator to an intelligent species is how said species ends up extinct because their prey aren’t deer and other prey animals who can’t cast fireballs and organize armed defenses.

On that note about world building, there were a lot of missed opportunities to better integrate the world. Ratfolk and the Goblinoids are good examples here. Ratfolk are fastidious and industrious. They’re not fans of wererats because they make life hard for them. They wouldn’t be a fringe part of the cities they’re in. They’d be a significant and integrated minority population. And the Goblinoids? Yeah, Paizo has come a long way, Goblins are a core player ancestry now. But the Hobgoblin and Bugbear entries weren’t up to par. They’re a triumvirate of related species and there needs to be better connective narrative tissue between them; past how they all use each other for mercenary work.

Next comes the Darklands. I like the new Underdark rebrand, but it’s crowded. So crowded. And there’s stuff in there like Serpentfolk (who should be playable and who should have been in the Mwangi book). It just seems like it was a dumping ground at times for stuff that could fit better as a transitional challenge or that should be on the surface.

The final bit here is the number of entries that players will want to play in game. Yes, some like the Amurrun (Catfolk) and Ratfolk and others are getting details in the Player Core 2 book. But Arboreals, Axiomites, Ghouls (especially with that new write up!), Minotaurs and others? There needs to be a plan for them to be playable because players are going to want to play them. Likewise, there needs to be more directions in the book to where people can find details on ancestries that are already playable.

The Ugly

Okay… Let’s start with the lack of indexing on the pdf. To compare some different entries and changes, I pulled up the first edition Bestiary and guess what? Fully indexed with links. How is it that this is in the previous edition’s Bestiary I can look up a monster in the table of contents, click on it, and go to it, but I have to scroll or enter a page number then scroll to find something in the latest edition? This was a Bad point previously, but in a book with over 400 entries? It’s into the ugly side. I love that Paizo is making good quality pdfs, but the lack of indexing is killing their utility at the end point of use.

There were two egregious entries in my initial read through that stuck with me. One was the Azarketi, aka the Gillmen. This one actually upset me a bit, because I am a sucker for Atlantis themed things and love undersea setting stuff. The effort behind them and their lore was hot garbage. The whole Azlant- Alghollthus Earthfall event was over 6000 years ago. The Alghollthus haven’t been a major threat or power since. And in those 6000+ years, the Azarketi have done little in terms of, say, breaking the control the Alghollthu can still exert, forming their own nation, or anything else. And they’re still despised by people on the surface because of the Alghollthu association. There are literal part devil or part demon people cruising around, an entire nation that’s aligned with literal Hell, but that 6000+ year old bone? That’s a hurdle too far? 6000+ years isn’t enough to move past that? Sorry, this was just past bad writing and planning.

Then there’s a lot of dodgy “fallen empires = degenerated people” vibes. The collapse of a civilization is no joke, we know that from real life. But we also know that it doesn’t result in a descent into whole previous tech levels and general “barbarism”. The Cyclops are a prime example of this. Like so many other fallen civilizations on Golarion, their flirtation with the powers of darkness that ultimately results in the fall of their empire. Now they’re another non-function, illiterate, no oral tradition having population that’s apparently incapable of curiosity and is just waiting out the last years of their existence in squalor. It’s not good world building or story telling.

The other thing in this section is the lack of connective tissue to existing sources of information in the second edition. Pathfinder is inextricably linked to Golarion, but it feels like there was an effort at times in this book to try to make it “generic”. It felt odd. Lore drops ranged from extensive to nearly austere, and there was no “Check out Lost Omens: XYZ” to point players or GMs to more info. It’s 2024. It’s okay to reference your own content.

Final Thoughts

This book was a rollercoaster at times, but I’m more than happy to give it a strong Rank A rating. Golarion and Pathfinder in general are still shaking off a lot of the D&D baggage, and it’s a process. And while names and powers are easy to switch, the world building practices in monster design is harder. But this book does way more good than it does wrong, and continues to prove that Paizo is dedicated to distinguishing themselves from their source material. This book is a solid entry to the core collection, and even with the bumps, it’s a fun read!